


Seams

by Freffers



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-09-08 04:17:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8830189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Freffers/pseuds/Freffers
Summary: A scar left too long alone will heal.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kitestrings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitestrings/gifts).



Winter winces as she presses thumb and forefinger to the apple of her throat. There is a seam running perfectly centred between them, a straight line from the jut of her chin down to the inch above her collarbone. So surgical in its precision that it edges on artistic, siphoning some of the Dust-red of the brooch it emerges from like a well-placed tattoo.  
  
She knows how fragile the young scab is. She is counting on it. The slightest increase in pressure, and it breaks as neatly as grapeskin. She gasps, more from memory than pain, and perhaps some base satisfaction too.  
  
Her soul has given up the complaint, her body soon to follow. A papercut like this should have healed in milliseconds - at worst, crudely knit blood and fibre were still capable of repairing it within a week. Instead the wound has lasted months. Winter is spiting them, but by now they should be accustomed to her neat brutality.  
  
She is made of cracks and makes them well.  
  
The back of her thumb automatically brushes the base of the reopened scar, to catch any blood before it can drop. Of course, there is none; only the faint, indefinite wet of the film sitting contently in the cut. Touch hardly stings, and if it does, Winter has become too fond of the sensation to notice.  
  
Her hand falls neatly between the roots at her side as she breathes the forest in again. This is the fourth instance of the ritual so far today. On longer nights she has wondered whether to worsen the gash herself by taking the needle-like blade of her estoc to it, but even with the aid of a mirror she would fear ruining the cleanliness of the line. No; this will do. Years from now, she is certain, aura will have learnt to fully relent and she will finally wear the scar like the birthright she wants it to be.  
  
In the presence of the individual who gave it to her, there is no room to pretend otherwise.  
  
Across the way, Raven watches. Smiling, probably. Winter has not yet been granted the honour of seeing her face unmasked, but she can imagine it easily; something lopsided, curled, closer to a grimace. Like the rest of her, never quite _right_. The crest tilts forward in an incomplete nod, barest breath of moonlight catching the ridges of three long, ragged clawmarks marring what used to be perfect white-and-red symmetry. It is unclear whether she is aware. "Embarrassing."  
  
"No," Winter says simply, and does not fill in the rest of the sentence. She has given up trying to understand Raven's motives, and so Raven shall have to settle for enigma also. She does, as always, sitting back against the tree with a creak of old leather and saying nothing more. She asks the world, but apparently her world is a very small one.  
  
Most of the night so far has enjoyed this odd silence. There is a time and a place for battle, harder to ascertain than a greenhorn might suppose, and this is not it. Certainly the tangled, evergreen wilds of Vytal, oversteeped in offal-scent and riven with the ever-recent scars of animal warfare, would appear to suit similar skirmishes between huntsfolk, fallen or non. But huntsfolk have senses for the invisible and inaudible, just as those without form or voice have a sense for them; the forest, fearful for itself, urges quiet, and courtesy keeps the women from defying it.  
  
A rather poetic excuse for the strange truce they have fallen into. It was a chase, once, just as such chases were supposed to be - fruitless for the pursuer and joyless for the pursued. It hadn't been enough. Without once saying the word they renamed it 'education' and dared the other to take on the challenge, scarcely believing that they had it in them. And yet, they now find nights like this to no longer be uncommon.  
  
Winter - much too slowly; she has hours still to fill - picks up the black leather glove laid across her thighs and, with a pleasantly sibilant sound, slips it back over her hand, wriggling her fingers into place. It is all Atlas material, and the soft over-warmth of the inner lining is a small homecoming. Aura protects the body from frost and fire alike, but only so far as mortality will allow.  
  
Something in Raven finds this noteworthy. She hardly signals the fact herself, but Winter still looks up, hyper-sensitive to when she is being read.  
  
"Cold?"  
  
"Quite. A small fire would not have been remiss."  
  
Raven laughs - rather, makes the empty, unsatisfying noise that Winter has come to recognise as laughter. It's the sound kept caged in the hollows of bones, a wind too inert to whistle, speaking of blacker and truer things than words can ever hope to. A fitting glimpse of plumage as her head tilts in a half-vocalised scoff. " _Sitting here_ is generous enough."  
  
"You're above making camp?"  
  
"No need for it. There are other ways to stay warm."  
  
(Raven depends upon Winter taking this confession as innuendo. The way her lips pinch, cheeks touching a little pink, confirms that she has. It's familiar, and for a moment white hair and coat merge together and Raven sees someone else entirely. Ah - _that_ forces a smile, a very bitter one. The play of light and shadow is all too intoxicating tonight.)  
  
It's a little too much, Winter thinks, despite herself feeling her face flush. Stoked by the unmentionable, Raven's voice holds heat but never warmth. She sets the ice of her mind on the statement; decides upon it being an arrogant declaration of auric art - perhaps a promise of instruction, should Winter continue to play student. She's never liked games, but even one as tortured as this throws the machinic monotony of the past few years into plain relief.  
  
"I can cope," she says, answering her own unspoken question with a voice too thin for the certainty behind it.  
  
To her surprise, _disgust_ rattles behind the mask. " _Of course you can_ ," - but no compliment there, pronounced as if it were a personal failing too depressing to contemplate. Winter would enquire, were Raven not - for once - intent on explaining herself first.  
  
There is but a metre between the two of them. Nonetheless the air parts - and for half a millisecond Winter's veins twitch in their cage - as Raven, with far more of the predator's ease than should become such a movement, stands up to her full height and walks the short distance over. (Winter remembers that she's never seen a bird crawl.) She swiftly lowers herself over her seated companion, not quite to the point of a straddle, resting an arm on one knee and leaning forward with casual intensity.  
  
Winter neither flinches nor retracts. Absurdly her presence increases, the only defence it has ever known. She raises her head sharply and slightly, in accord with all the conceit of her station; coincidental, of course, that the movement bares her neck that little bit more. Her cool regard for the situation is palpable, but, crucially, she does not refuse it.  
  
The forest air is cold but humid, the smells of old blood and lichen all-suffusing, and in this, the wall of ivory keeping breath from breath is a small mercy.  
  
"You make healing too easy," Raven says, and roughly flicks a gloved thumb up the wound, the slight armouring catching against Winter's apple. Her skin flares white in its wake, swelling pink as the wound starts to weep a little. Winter makes no noise this time, but the way her neck tenses and lips stiffen speaks for her. She blinks as slowly as she can manage.  
  
Again Raven's thumb returns to the scar's base, and Winter expects another brusque stroke. (She _prays_ for something else; something altogether stronger, harder, vice-like and leather-bound and full around her throat.) But, neither. It stays there, only lightly brushing where the newly loosened blood is collecting in the crevice, taking the payment owed for the lesson. It is Winter's imagination that plays hot breath against the coolness splitting her neck, and she does her best not to indulge it.  
  
The hand comes away - held just so, ensuring that none of the tithe falls off - but not far. Tauntingly slow, it shifts across until it is barely a centimetre from the Atlesian white of Winter's starched collar, clearly threatening to smear some of the blood on the pristine fabric. It hangs there, stationary, waiting to be denied.  
  
  
There is a very noticeable pause, long enough for both to understand _exactly_ what is meant by it, before Winter slaps the hand away quite forcefully.  
  
  
Raven permits herself only a low, unfinished hum, tapering off like the accident it isn't. The girl is a fast learner.  
  
There is stillness - black glove a clear warning, red gauntlet very casually signing surrender. Even with Raven's acceptance of that blunt refusal they are still stuck in these positions, kept at impasse by instinctive obstinacy. Raven, by now a stranger to even the pretence of equality, is unperturbed. This is no battle, and she has knelt here many times.  
  
From the underbrush of her mask she takes in the strange, fleshy steel her hunter's face so quickly resorts to, as unyielding as any metal. Nothing about Winter invites. And _yet_. Raven feels it: fine-spun threads of her presence, thin and weak and pinching at the body they so deftly bind. Enclosure, the hunter's art. She is not wanted here, and so here she must remain. She has been chained before, but never with as little effort, never with as little care.  
  
Winter's stare is narrow, predicably intense. Close to the skin, just audible in the white noise of the night, Raven picks up the soft thrum of her fluttering pulse. She waits for a tell-tale hiccup, any small break from the steady rhythm, and when it doesn't come-- how suddenly the sensation of ivory fit snug against temple becomes uncomfortable, how unpleasant the sweat gathering where her fringe sticks to her brow, and she craves her own face again, if only to place teeth where they might coax out weakness.  
  
That would be weakness in itself.  
  
Winter herself has not broken, but her focus is starting to waver with the effort of maintaining eye contact. _Precious_ , Raven thinks - until that gaze suddenly settles again, ever so subtly shifted south, strengthened. It rests on her sternum. A place of vanity for Raven, and an opening she should not have left.  
  
For a moment, their thoughts are as one. They both know necklaces are a risk in battle, but they are also a distraction. The girl is too close to be distracted. She can _see_. Coursing under the light folds of Raven's robe, a pattern of fat, webbed scarring, only a little whiter than the skin it ghosts across.  
  
Raven's expressions make noises that can't be heard. She imagines a hand - a paw - darting for her collarbone. She imagines beads pulled taut until they snap. She imagines the threads tightening, testing their limits, knowing that their prisoner could break them at any point. Understands that they do not; that their wielder is barely conscious of them, let alone the power they hold. An instinct for trapping is not a knowledge of it. In any case, Raven has never been one to stay trapped. And she has _never_ been one to be read.  
  
As suddenly as before, she pushes herself to standing and steps out of her straddle. Again, this was no battle; therefore, there is no loser, no one to fear folding first. It is humans who reduce the dances of animals to engagements and retreats.  
  
Winter remains unnaturally still, her head barely moving to follow Raven's path, her eyes easily resisting any urge to blink. Somehow, it is not at all the language of submission. As simple as some may find it to bring her emotions to the fore, she still keeps some uncanny idiosyncrasies.  
  
Raven looks down at her from here. The scar, still seeping a little, can't be seen from this angle, and amidst the break in mud and foliage Winter might even meet a certainly value of respectable. It's more than the title of Specialist she so eagerly wears; there's something a little unnerving in her rigidity, too deep to be uniform. Raven, face only just spared the marks of it, has already been exposed to one of the reasons why.  
  
She sees it too clearly. Ever-straining behind that pallid skin a thousand beasts brought to heel, monsters snatched from their divinity and made to play human. A fate worse than death, in Raven's eyes. A fate she has done well to be wary of.  
  
No, nothing about Winter invites. She _cages_.  
  
So Raven keeps only her head turned, looking over her shoulder, no less rigid against the shades of black making up the forest than her apparent companion and only a touch dearer to it.  
  
"Careful, wolfcub. Otherwise you'll be sewn back together; you won't like that one bit." One booted foot turns but ten degrees on its heel and presses mud into the white corner of Winter's tailcoat. "Not all threads are quite so easy to break."  
  
There are too many honesties told there, and even as Raven takes the two steps needed to return her to her sitting-place, even as Winter curtly lifts her soiled uniform to examine the mark left behind, neither are quite sure who spoke and who heard.

**Author's Note:**

> Just wanted to get this quiet, post-Persistent interlude off my chest.


End file.
